[ISN] Infrastructure Official Draws Praise for Job

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Thu Nov 06 2003 - 01:21:42 PST

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    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A515-2003Nov4.html
    
    By John Mintz
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    November 5, 2003
    
    Robert Liscouski still has the pierced ear but not the long hair that
    he sported in the 1970s, when he was an undercover narcotics officer
    in northern New Jersey selling marijuana and cocaine to biker gangs.
    
    Now Liscouski, 49, has a higher-ranking job, but one requiring the
    same long hours and cool demeanor that he exhibited as a narc -- he is
    the Department of Homeland Security's top official protecting gas
    pipelines, railroads, dams and other critical facilities from
    terrorist attacks.
    
    The job of assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is one of
    the most challenging in the 170,000-employee department, as well as
    one of the main reasons Homeland Security was created, officials said.
    
    While many of the department's divisions are being criticized for
    disorganization, Liscouski's 200-person shop is widely praised for the
    crispness of its analysis and its efficiency. Some members of Congress
    who are highly critical of other Homeland Security offices praised
    Liscouski's performance, as did a number of industry figures.
    
    "He's very knowledgeable on issues of infrastructure protection," said
    Ronald Dick, a former top FBI counterterrorism official who is now
    director of national security and foreign affairs at Computer Sciences
    Corp., a federal contractor. "He's got some huge challenges addressing
    things never done before in this country."
    
    Some defense experts say the war on terrorism is one of the first U.S.  
    national-security crises in which the government is forced to ask for
    voluntary help from wide swaths of industry. It is Liscouski's job to
    secure that help.
    
    U.S. intelligence says al Qaeda is interested in targeting elements of
    the nation's critical infrastructure -- sites as diverse as the Hoover
    Dam, Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the DuPont chemical complex
    in Delaware. The terrorist network's central goals would be to cripple
    the economy and strike symbols of U.S. power.
    
    >From the government's point of view, the problem is that many of those
    facilities -- some of whose destruction could devastate communications
    or transportation or commerce -- lie in private hands. So Liscouski
    must jawbone to persuade industry executives to blanket the facilities
    with security.
    
    "We need to frame our arguments to CEOs [in favor of spending money to
    secure corporate assets] on the basis that it is good for
    shareholders," besides being good for the country, Liscouski said.
    
    After leaving the Bergen County, N.J., detective squad in 1980,
    Liscouski joined the State Department's security office in Europe. It
    was the early 1980s, when German, Italian and Palestinian terrorist
    groups were on the loose in Europe. Liscouski protected U.S.  
    Ambassador Maxwell Rabb in Rome, trained foreign security agents and
    acted as the department's representative to Interpol.
    
    In 1991, he joined a software firm, Orion Scientific, and sold
    data-sorting software to U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement
    agencies. Six years later, he set up a small company, largely with his
    own money, that researched news and market trends for corporate
    clients.
    
    Ultimately his firm went under, and he joined Coca-Cola Co.'s security
    division.
    
    Far from simply guarding gates, his office was in charge of protecting
    Coke's secure data -- including its all-important product formulas --
    as it zipped across the 200 countries in which the company operates.  
    Liscouski also helped handle all manner of crises, such as a 1999
    health scare in Belgium stemming from allegations that Coke cans had
    been contaminated and leading to a $250 million recall.
    
    "At Coke, I learned you have to articulate a business argument for why
    to spend money on security," he said.
    
    "Bob's DNA is he's very focused, very dedicated, and when he's
    committed to something, he does it 1,000 percent," said James Hush, a
    Liscouski friend and Coke vice president also in security.
    
    Liscouski joined Homeland Security on March 24, only weeks after the
    department was formed as the combination of 22 separate agencies. It
    was also a few days into the Iraq war, and the imposition of the
    highest security alert in U.S. history. National Guard troops guarded
    some nuclear plants, and hundreds of other sites were locked down as
    never before.
    
    Despite having a staff that was only a fraction of what his budget
    called for, Liscouski was one of the top officials coordinating this
    security alert. "There was so much to do and so few people to do it,"  
    he said, recalling months of hectic 20-hour days.
    
    His key task is examining the possible threats against U.S. industry
    -- as gleaned from, for example, the vague intelligence picked up in
    interrogations of captured al Qaeda operatives -- and matching them
    with the possible vulnerabilities at thousands of key sites and
    networks across the country. Then he takes action to batten down the
    hatches.
    
    House Democrats, declaring in a recent report that "two years is too
    long to wait," criticize Liscouski's shop as too slow in finishing a
    listing of which parts of the infrastructure are most at risk. But
    agency officials say the delay is caused by his office's understaffing
    and the importance of the task.
    
    One question facing Liscouski is whether the government should demand
    through regulation that industries secure themselves, or let them do
    it voluntarily.
    
    "Only time will tell," he said. "We're now using the bully pulpit, but
    industry has to step up and take responsibility."
    
    Harvard University information policy professor Anthony Oettinger said
    he cannot imagine anyone better suited to crack such a challenging
    puzzle.
    
    "Bob's range of expertise is astonishing," said Oettinger, who chairs
    a CIA science advisory panel on which Liscouski served as a member.  
    "He's got such common sense, and he's unflappable. . . . He's
    bedrock."
    
    
    
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